Recent reviews by CommanderCH

Let me start this one off that you'll have to be a bit of a "grindy" person and preferably want at least one team-mate to play this with as you're missing out on a bunch of things when going in solo. The game appears to be dead already without really any feature improvements (at least couldn't find any) or guides that are actually updated except for the god-abilities one which is actually extremely helpful and I recommend checking it out just so that you understand a bit the basics since those are awfully explained in the game.

The general movement is very stale and requires you to either find cheese-spots or simply move around in circles to avoid being hit. It goes both ways that "shooting" is the best approach instead of "meleeing" since the enemies will deal a lot of damage if they hit you and the projectiles can either be relatively fast from the enemies or even tracking you down. Melee can be fun but ultimately falls short due to the amount of damage you receive.

You'll have to play the game for a bunch of hours to really figure out how to deal with everything and gain access to the "cool" weapons. I do also recommend to play on Normal as it provides the "real" gameplay when you die.

The dungeons are randomly generated and small enough to find your way through. Sharing loot and XP seems fairly well shared with two players as well, however leveling up is the only way to unlock new weapons and armors for you to try out and it takes a pretty long time.

Eventually by playing enough you'll figure out combinations with your god-abilities (there's a lot not explained about those) and their ascendants together with which armor you have equipped, making this a bit more fun to play the longer you do. You can also trade money to your co-op partner to help them out at the beginning to get their weapons. It is highly advised to focus on getting weapons with higher damage output first (still preferably shooting weapons) since it'll allow you to progress faster through the dungeons. At some point you profit a lot more in the later levels than in the beginning ones.

There's a couple unfortunate bugs such as screen resolution issues if you play on widescreens or getting softlocked (only found one so far) in certain spots. The cool thing is, that there's actually a couple secrets in some of the layers so keep your eyes open!

I do believe that the game doesn't offer too many hours of gameplay (maybe like 20-40) until you're done with everything so don't expect too much. It's still a funny game to play with your friends here and there though.

Side-note, all bonus cards can be obtained by multiple people at once if you coordinate together to get the same "amount".

Amazing relatively quick puzzle game but well worth the price.
I highly recommend that you try to figure out everything yourselves (yes, it's possible). I had a hard time with some of the puzzles and they do get progressively harder, but trying different approaches or thinking a bit outside the box finally shown the solutions.
It's a great feeling when you conquer one of the trickier puzzles, especially the very last ones.

There's lots of different way to "review" this game but ultimately I'm probably supposed to give this one a thumps up due to the simple reason that I'm paying the game again and for a longer period.

A huge plus is certainly that the game is now free and offers cross-save, however do not be deceived by that because it will not transfer any DLCs you previously purchased and also most of the content you unlocked may become locked again such as subclass trees or certain exotic gear. That's a big no-go in my opinion. I do not understand why Bungie can't just store the licenses on their database (basically whether you've owned them on a certain platform) and grant them to you again if you activate cross-save.

On top of that, the game is free yes, however if you really want to enjoy it to its full-extend, you're almost forced to buy some of the newer DLCs and they're a bit pricy for people out there who may not have a proper income.

Normally there's a soft-cap each season that you can reach by simply "playing the game". Once you're there, most activities become almost useless and are mainly tied to grinds or just playing long enough which is a mechanic I never really appreciate. Especially getting from the soft-cap to high-end activities is a tedious grind-process that can be very boring if you do not have any friends to play with.

Friends or at least a clan that you can play with sometimes is almost a must in that regard to stay entertained. There's so many things to do in this game that you can get lost quickly, yet some grinds are way more beneficial than others.

For such a company I expected much more than that. The bugs are very odd and very annoying. Disconnects and quitters all over the place because of the horrible challenge system that exists in this game.
Fancy having all skins behind a paywall? This is YOUR game where you can literally waste 1000s of bucks to buy all the skins you want.
Fancy playing your own game-mode? Well have fun making custom lobbies then, because everything is in one single playlist.
I thought 343 Industries learned by now, nope, even worse than the previous games.
Oh and also, be prepared that your PC almost dies when booting up the game because these intros obviously take so much power.
Oh yea, and don't forget that you may get banned even after quitting for being the last actual player in your team.
Forgot to mention that Ranked is busted too. Crossplay is enforced for 3+ players and the ranking system just makes no sense at all. You can play terrible and still gain Rank XP (e.g. I got Ranked in Diamond 1 which is the highest ranking-in possible, it's also the second highest tier that exists).

After 94 hours and having unlocked all the achievements (and my 7th Seriously achievement in the series) I can finally say, it was worth it. The game is a nice little twist (unlike Gears POP!) and still fits in pretty well into the Gears lore. I wasn't an XCOM gamer and still enjoyed this game. The campaign is quite alright, there's even a plot in it.

Although if you're an achievement hunter, it might require some save-scumming.

Also the last part of the last mission is quite "Insane" when playing on Insane. The last mission alone took me 4h to complete.

As of writing this guide, I have sunk at least 1000 hours into this game since I have played it via Microsoft Store mostly instead of Steam. I did that due to being able to play 4 days earlier (which wasn't possible with the Steam version). It turned out to be a mistake because the game was plagued with many launch issues like losing stats especially but slowly The Coalition managed to fix most of them.

I do play Versus, however not nearly as much as I play PvE so my feedback is mainly based on PvE content rather than PvP.

There's many different opinions about the PvE. A ton of people don't like the new class system, me however, I enjoy it. The game does require you to grind the same maps over and over again but with some time, you'll be able to pretty much only play on the highest two difficulties. Escape is a nice variety over the tons of Horde matches I repetitively played. It's a lot more tactical, a bit harder than Horde and always a new challenge when a new one is released (at least 6 Escape Hives per 3 months). Escapes usually take about 15 mins, while Horde takes you about 2-3 hours.

This game is based on grinding hard, really hard. Unlocking all the skill cards with the characters takes quite some time. Reaching Re-Up 50 (which is the Prestige system), takes even longer (I'd estimate it at around 3 years currently, if no XP boosting is involved, by playing 4h a day each). There is a possibility to buy boosts with Iron, which can be earned 500 per operation (3 months) with the Tour of Duty or bought via microtransactions. A 100 day boost requires 1500 iron. Tour of Duty comes with medals, which is usually grinding certain kills/eliminations and daily challenges which are similar. Finishing the Tour of Duty is usually not a problem if you play 30mins a day.

The campaign involves certain open world aspects linked to certain story progression (it's a mix of the two). Unfortunately the open world part itself involves no enemies, you'll have to drive to a side-mission to face a few enemies. Jack is your friend in the campaign who can be upgraded by finding components throughout the entire campaign. The story itself is alright, I really enjoy the transitions between cutscenes and actual gameplay since you can not really see them when playing on PC.

Basically I do not recommend this game to play who do not like grinding but for anyone else it's actually quite alright. Just be aware that with every patch that is released, there's usually some flaws in it (positively and negatively) in a sense of making things unobtainable, yet other things way easier to achieve due to some bugs.

Feel free to ask in the comments anything you'd like to know, I'm happy to answer them.

Recommened to play with some friends. The game offers some funny moments and the kind of type to play is funny too.

REMINDER: This "DLC" is actually to ONLY support OVERKILL!

You actually only get two things from this DLC:

• Mega Masks (Dallas, Chains, Hoxton, Wolf)
  
• 1/25 Random Secret Item

PROS:

• The Mega Masks in my opinion are all 4 really awesome. They outrun the Infamy 2.0 masks and all the ones inbefore.
  
• You get a secret item. Whoever knows what this is for. :)
  
• You're supporting OVERKILL.
  
• There's a total of only 50'000 packs, making it unique.

CONS:

• It was once mentioned, that the content from the normal OVERKILL Pack is included, which was later changed. This is unfair for those who bought it, before they changed that.
  
• You don't get a lot of content from it.
  
• You only get 1 out of 25 possible secret items, which will be random.
  
• The secret item might suck (PS: It is cosmetic only)
  
• According to some sources, OVERKILL already has enough money.
  
• The money is not worth it (if it wouldn't be a support DLC).
  
• There's a total of only 50'000 packs.

You can actually see, that there's more cons than pros. However, as an addicted PD2 player, I have to upvote this because the masks are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome...

Comparing this game to PAYDAY 2, I generally prefer PAYDAY: The Heist for the following points:

1. The "loud" is more fun here than in PD2.
2. "Diamond Heist" doesn't have any client lag during stealth.
3. The DLC is worth the price compared to many other PD2 DLCs.
4. Masks are better and more in focus than in PD2.
5. It more likely focuses you to play with other people, than solo.
- The heists are tough on highest difficulty, most of them impossible to be done with 2 standard players, sometimes even 3 standard players.
6. Bain interacts more with the crew than he does in PD2.
7. 2h Overdrill on Overkill 145+
8. The Overkill 145+ difficulty.
9. Overkill 145+ in general is more difficult than Death Wish (except you play PD2, PD:TH style)
10. Undercover special waves...

I prefer playing PD2 for the following reasons:

1. Way more heists.
2. You can easily solo run most of the heists (due to stealth).
3. Stealth may be more interesting if you build the correct "challenges".
4. You have more options what you could do in PD2, than in PD:TH.

General ups (+) and downs (-) (most of them already mentioned):

+ Way more co-op based
+ It's harder (on the highest difficulty, default)
+ Love those masks...
+ Very nice soundtracks
+ Focus on co-op
- No Mercy has certain stealth issues
- There's no focus on stealth in PD:TH, it's in general about "loud"
- Singlplayer works on Hard difficulty but is a pain on higher difficulties
- Lots of hackers who can ruin your gaming experience.

There's probably even many more points, which I probably forgot to mention. :)

This game is still in beta but just owns any crafting game. Lots of things to do and so much randomness around. Just awesome. The soundtrack is also great.